Masonry

I present here another instalment in my occasional series: Orange(ish) Bees on Pink Crab Apple Blossom.

If you saw yesterday's post you might remember the rather spiffy Common Carder queen I caught in almost exactly this pose, clinging to the stamens, tongue out in search of the crab apple nectar. (Which I have to assume is a great deal sweeter than the fruit: just thinking the words "crab apple" causes my forehead to pucker, and my mouth to purse in quite a decent impression of a cat's bum.) The bees are even sporting pretty much the same colour scheme, and the two photos could almost mirror each other, if I cropped this one square (Memo to self: try cropping it square).

The thing that really spoils the symmetry is that today's bee is much smaller than yesterday's. He's a Red Mason Bee, Osmia bicornis, and comes in at around 9mm long, and maybe 3mm wide; the Common Carder is probably 11mm long, but around 5mm wide, and covered with a thick fluffy pile of hair which makes her look even bigger. If anyone has done a comparative study of bee weights I haven't been able to find it, but bee people like to use forewing length as a measure of size, and in this case it's telling: his is around 7mm long, and hers is 13mm. He's the neat little speedy guy, and she's the chonky great boss lady.

I like a chonky great boss lady, for reasons you can probably work out, but I do love the little mason bees. Osmia bicornis is usually the first to emerge here, and the males always come out a couple of weeks before the females. As far as I can tell this little chap is absolutely the first of the family to venture out - after spotting him on Tuesday and failing to get a photo (rookie error: I twitched in excitement and he twitched in response, made the leap into hyperspace, and disappeared), I've wasted quite a bit of time each day specifically searching for Red Mason Bees, and each day the result has been either none (Wednesday) or one (yesterday and today). For sure though, other males will emerge soon, and possibly also some of the annoyingly similarly named Red-tailed Mason Bee (Osmia bicolor), which we also get here, though in smaller numbers. And which, by the way, actually is red (or more accurately, red and black), as opposed to the Red Mason Bee, which - as any fule kno - is orange.